From The Connecticut River Valley in Southern Vermont and New Hampshire: Historical Sketches by Lyman S. Hayes, Tuttle Co., Marble City Press, Rutland, VT., 1929, page 229:
INCIDENTS OF THE RAISING OF THE OLD ROCKINGHAM MEETING HOUSE–GEN. JOHN FULLER BUILDER
Among the incidents connected with the erection of the old Rockingham Meeting House in 1787, the building which has many years been treasured by the inhabitants of the town and is still the Mecca for tourists and sighttseers, the circumstances connected with the raising of the frame on June 9th, 1787, are of particularly interestting historical interest. No definite record of the cirrcumstances was made at the time, as far as found, but several old letters have been unearthed which throw light upon it. One written in 1884 by the Rev. Horace Allbee, who was born in this town in 1797 and returned as an old man to spend his last days on his old home farm on the meadows near the Williams river, sets the date. He wrote as follows:-
"Mrs. Ezekiel Weston was the daughter of David Haselton, who was born in 1791. Mrs. Weston says that she distinctly remembers that her grandmother, Jane Haselton, wife of Richard Haselton, related to her that her eldest child, Uriel (Mrs. Weston's uncle), was born on the 6th day of June, 1787, and that on the 9th day of June of the same year, before departing for the raising of the meeting house, her husband, Richard, came into the house and bade her and their baby, who was then only three days old, good-bye, expecting, or fearing, at least, that he might be killed at the raising, but, on the contrary, returned in safety to his family after the house was raised. And further, my brother, E. W. Allbee, says he distinctly remembers hearing our father, Ebenezer Allbee, who was born on the 17th of April, 1768, say that he was at the raising, being then 19 years [230] of age, and that it was in June, 1787, but he does not recollect the day of the month. The statement of Mrs. Weston fixes the precise date as June 9, 1787, of which there can be no doubt."
Mr. Allbee often told friends and relatives that his father, Ebenezer Allbee, who was at the raising, told him that on the day of the raising of the meeting house a washtub full of toddy, made of rum and loaf sugar, was prepared and notice was given the men to come down from the frame and help themselves with the tin dippers.
An aged man living in Greenfield, Mass., in 1887, in a letter to A. N. Swain of the Bellows Falls Times about the old meeting house building, says:–
"It was my good fortune to have met General Fuller several times during the summer of 1816, who was the master builder of this old house. I was told at that time that when all was ready Mr. Fuller quietly took his place on the beam and went up with the front broadside, as was customary in those days. At the time I saw him he lived in the Dr. Campbell house, so called, now owned and occupied by Rodney Wiley. I think it must have required three or four extra men to carry Mr. Fuller up, for at the time I saw him he was good for at least 250 pounds."
General Fuller was one of the foremost residents of the town in his early days. He lived then on a farm about a mile north of Rockingham village, on top of the hill a short distance south of what were the Proctor and Wiley farms. A letter written by an old man living in Nashua, N. H., July 7, 1884, gives the following additional details of the" "raising" :–
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"l can remember any event told me 70 years ago easier than incidents that took place five years ago. The year that I was 16 years old my father died in Rockingham and I was obliged to work out from home. I went to work for old General Fuller. He lived one mile from the middle of the town and was the man who built the meeting house. He gave me a full account of the time they had at this raising. After he got everything ready the old General took a bottle of rum in one hand, a tumbler in the other and stood on the plate of the bent on the south side, then he gave the order to put it up in that position. He rode up on the plate, and he was a man weighing 200 pounds. When they had got it up he stood on the plate, drank his health to the crowd below, then threw his bottle and tumbler down and called for the ladder, coming down amid long and loud cheering."
Without doubt serious accidents occurred at times at those "raisings" of olden times, as feared by Richard Haselton, and described below. At the raising of the present church building in the village of Langdon, N. H., in June of 1842, a portion of the heavy frame fell killing one man and seriously injuring 15 or 20 others. The Rockingham meeting house is 56 feet long and 44 feet wide. It is built of heavy old growth pine timber, porrtions of the frame and roof being 14 by 16 inches square, which must have required the combined efforts of a large force of men to raise in sections, or "bents."
During the first years of the history of the old Rockkingham town meeting house, its front door was used to post notices of all important meetings and for the general dissemination of knowledge among citizens of the town. One of its more important uses was the posting of all matrimonial bans, or intentions of marriage, such [232] as were required in those years to be proclaimed in church, or other place prescribed by law, that any person might object to their taking place.
March 15, 1804, Rev. Samuel Whiting posted the following unique, but expressive, notice upon the door:–
"Notice–John Parks Finney and Lydia Archer; of Rockingham, came to my house, and having been pubblished agreeably to law, but he being a minor and not having his father's consent, I refused to marry them. They, however, declared that they took and considered each other as husband and wife, meaning to live and do for each other accordingly.
"SAMUEL WHITING,
"Minister. "
This may be considered as the first free love marrriage that ever took place in this county. In the year 1800 the census showed the number of inhabitants in the town to be 1,634, while the number of school children enrolled in the 16 districts of the town in 1805 was 736.